Bumblebee allows you to run specific programs on the discrete graphic card, inside of an X session using the integrated graphic card.

Bumblebee allows you to run specific programs on the discrete graphic card, inside of an X session using the integrated graphic card.

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It's written by [http://www.martin-juhl.dk/ Martin Juhl] and published under GPL v3.<br />

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[http://www.martin-juhl.dk/ Martin Juhl] started with the project and published under GPL v3 and now continues with [Ironhide] (deprecated). To improve co-operation, developers decided to fork the project into a team: [http://Bumblebee-Project/ Bumblebee-Project].

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===What it does - and does not===

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=== Installation ===

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Actually only Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSuSE and Fedora is supported by this script, but Martin is working on to porting on other distros and make his script more distro-independent. For info about state of work in distro porting or to help in porting please see https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/issues/7

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Bumblebee 2.4 and before was written in Bash and has now been superseded by Bumblebee 3.0, which is written in C.

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Many distributions are supported, including Arch Linux, Debian, Mandriva and Ubuntu. For the latest installation

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instructions, see http://wiki.bumblebee-project.org/Install-and-usage.

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Arch and Gentoo are support by:

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Ubuntu users (especially when upgrading) see [http://askubuntu.com/q/36930/6969 How well do laptops with Nvidia Optimus work?]

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Arch Linux - ArchWiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee

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=== Testing ===

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Gentoo - Iegor: https://github.com/iegor/bumblebee-Gentoo-support

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Currently this application '''does''' shut down the nvidia card when not used, but only on Ubuntu.. Other distribution are in progress.. still balance the load between the two cards is missing..

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===Installing it===

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<pre>git clone https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee

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cd bumblebee

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sudo ./install.sh</pre>

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===Testing it===

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You can compare display performances with and without bumblebee :

You can compare display performances with and without bumblebee :

<pre>glxgears

<pre>glxgears

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optirun64 glxgears (64-bit)

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optirun glxgears</pre>

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optirun glxgears (32-bit)</pre>

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Note: when running just glxgears, if you see this message:

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<pre>Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be

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approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.</pre>

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The FPS value will always be close to 60. Instead you should do:

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<pre>vblank_mode=0 glxgears</pre>

===Configure it===

===Configure it===

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To Reconfigure bumblebee :

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On versions prior to 2.3, you had to run <tt>bumblebee-configuration</tt> to configure Bumblebee. Newer versions automatically detect the right version for you.

Latest revision as of 18:51, 7 June 2012

Bumblebee allows you to run specific programs on the discrete graphic card, inside of an X session using the integrated graphic card.
Martin Juhl started with the project and published under GPL v3 and now continues with [Ironhide] (deprecated). To improve co-operation, developers decided to fork the project into a team: Bumblebee-Project.

Contents

Installation

Bumblebee 2.4 and before was written in Bash and has now been superseded by Bumblebee 3.0, which is written in C.
Many distributions are supported, including Arch Linux, Debian, Mandriva and Ubuntu. For the latest installation
instructions, see http://wiki.bumblebee-project.org/Install-and-usage.

Uninstalling

Source

If you're really using an old version (from MrMEEE, versions prior to 2.3), you are screwed.
If you have installed Bumblebee 2.4 from git, run `bumblebee-uninstall`.
Version 3.0 and later can be uninstalled from the source directory by running `make uninstall`.